Insight and analysis from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones team in Brussels

Greenpeace Activist Vs. Pianist

A former Greenpeace activist who has been arrested several times has turned today’s Dutch general election on its head, posing a surprise threat to Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the leader of the center-right Liberal Party.

Labor Party Diederik Samsom has been catapulted into the political limelight over the past weeks thanks to an image overhaul and winning performances during a string of pre-election television debates. According to opinion polls, he is set to be just one seat behind Mr. Rutte, though with at least one third of voters still undecided on the eve of the election, he could yet take the lead.

Although both men look set to lead the next coalition government, the race has added piquancy to the campaign, with Mr. Rutte seeking to undermine his rival with warnings that his ‘political experiments’ could destabilize the country.

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The mild-mannered 45-year old prime minister, who had originally banked on a career as a concert pianist, has been under fire from opponents who say that his two-year leadership was ineffectual and veered too sharply towards austerity: His cabinet collapsed in April over a dispute over a package of cuts needed to reach EU budget targets.

Mr. Samsom is a trained nuclear physicist and known for his gung-ho campaign style during his years as an environmental activist, landing him in hot water with the authorities more than once. It’s hardly a typical profile for a mainstream politician, but observers say Mr. Samsom has managed to rein in his more combative streak to win over voters.

“Samsom was always seen as the best kid in the class when he first joined the party, a bit of a know-it-all who would often show his teeth, which used to put people’s backs up,” says Jaap Jansen, who produces the main politics show on Dutch TV and who was nominated as the country’s most influential politics commentator on Twitter early this year.

“So they had to soften his image, which they’ve managed to pull off brilliantly.”

Andre Krouwel, a well-known commentator and political scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, says Mr. Samsom’s background means he could also attract some protest voters, who form a considerable part of the electorate.

“This is a man who used to chain himself to fishing boats, and some people find his radicalism appealing. He’s more multi-dimensional than Mr. Rutte, who is really viewed as policy wonk.”

Unusually, Mr. Samsom has campaigned with his family, including his disabled daughter, a novelty in the Netherlands where politicians keep their private lives very much under wraps. Little is known about Mr. Rutte, who is single, lives in a modest apartment in The Hague and is known to visit his mother’s house often and loves to tinkle the ivories whenever his gets a chance.

Mr. Samsom is now viewed by Dutch voters as having the greatest ‘prime ministerial’ potential of all the 11 main candidates, according to several leading pollsters. His makeover has been complete, says Mr. Jansen, from changing his appearance to fine-tuning his debating style.

Mr. Samsom has traded in T-shirts and jeans for slim-fitting suits and shirts purchased at Oger, a Dutch gentlemen’s outfitter. The fly-away hair was first shaved off entirely and his now cut very short, something which even Mr. Samsom admitted last weekend was a conscious decision.

However, while campaigning on the streets of Dordrecht last weekend, shoppers at the Saturday market flocked to Mr. Rutte, who joked with children and pensioners alike. “He is such a charmer, I hadn’t quite expected that,” said Jori Trouw, a lawyer and mother to a three-year old boy. “Look at them all throwing themselves at him!”

During debates, the ever-smiling Mr. Rutte has had a far easier time than Mr. Samsom in getting the odd laugh from the live studio audiences – the 41-year-old told a Dutch newspaper last week that he finds it ‘hard to crack jokes in public’.

Still, if this week’s debates were anything to go by, it seems that the two are getting ready to work together to form a so-called ‘purple coalition’, a process that will kick off Thursday after initial results are known but which could take many weeks to complete. Both seem to have a good rapport and refrained from outright attacks of one another’s policies, reserving their rhetorical punches for other candidates.

Populist challenger Geert Wilders has lambasted them both, quipping: “It’s clear you are preparing to get into the same bed… and it’s no use you telling us otherwise.”

About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.